iFood turned its delivery data into a free mentor for its failing family restaurants

iFood's most important partners were dying. Over half of Brazil's family-owned restaurants closed within two years, a churn rate that was as dangerous for the delivery platform as it was for the owners themselves.

A normal campaign would have run a celebrity-led ad saying 'we care.' DM9 São Paulo did the opposite and built a utility inside the app: a digital business mentor fed by iFood's 120 million monthly orders, using AI to give more than 3,000 small family restaurants hyper-local advice.

The tool told owners what dishes customers were searching for, when ingredient prices were moving, what rivals were promoting, and which vetted suppliers and staff could help. It stopped being a delivery app and turned into a survival guide for people who had no business training.

Participating restaurants saw up to 40% more sales than non-users, and small-restaurant sign-ups to the platform rose in double digits. The jury prize praised it for turning data from a mere proof point into the engine of the whole story.

Turn your own data into their survival tool

The data only iFood owned answered questions a small owner could never research

Fixing a real operating problem replaced the feel-good of an ad

It was free and built in, so adoption happened inside the existing workflow

Restaurants that grew stayed loyal, attacking the churn that hurt iFood too

If your partners keep dying, the smartest retention move is to hand them the data only you can see, free.

The tool was adopted by thousands of restaurants and helped shift iFood from a delivery middleman to a business partner. It won a Cannes Lions Gold in Creative Commerce, and 'recipe for growth' became shorthand for using first-party data as utility rather than as an ad.